After reading the lively discussion about today's gas prices, I figured I should contribute to it by giving the story a slightly different angle. Bear in mind, this is just a story; the lone character in it is purely fictional, and whatever resemblance he may bear to real-life whomever is totally accidental, etc.
Here goes.
Somewhere in Germany, a century and a half ago:
My name is Carl. I have an exquisitely designed brain in reasonably good working condition. I am fond of what I privately call “my thought process.”
I have a comfortable inherited income. My relatives hate my guts, and this suits me just fine: time is a valuable asset. It shouldn’t be wasted on hobnobbing with one’s obtuse and boring family members.
I’m a thinker in the purest sense of the word.
Being neither vain nor ambitious, I seldom share my thoughts with anyone. No point, really.
A month later:
Something awful has happened. I’m the only one who understands.
A reckless Yankee poked the ground in his reckless Yankee backyard with a stick, and up came a measure of reddish slime. And only a few months after that, a reckless Polack discovered a ridiculously cheap method that can transform the reddish slime into a transparent liquid containing an astonishing amount of energy.
Now. I’m by far the most intelligent person in the world today, and possibly in history, too. That’s a secret, of course. I wouldn’t want anyone to get jealous. Jealousy makes folks miserable.
I’m pretty fond of mankind – less so than Jesus was, perhaps, i.e. I wouldn’t give my life for it. Nevertheless, I’m pretty fond of the suckers. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
Now something bad is certain to happen.
I mean, coal is bad enough, but this new stuff is worse.
I’m fond of the age-old hierarchical structure of society:
- the upper classes whose ambitions are kept in check by the constant threat of the peasants’ revolt;
- the middle class that gives us tradesmen as well as philosophers; engineers as well as poets, and so forth;
- and the lower classes, toiling in the sweat of their lower class brows, freemen and slaves, paying off humanity’s collective debt incurred so long ago, on the other side of the ornate fence of Eden, balancing out the Original Sin.
It works. We’re safe as a species, at least.
Now, coal . . . It threatened the natural order of things for a while. Coal-fired machinery rendered the use of basic, grass-root, screw-you-Jack slavery obsolete. I mean, goodness, we came pretty close to abolishing hard labor altogether. Fortunately, greed saved the day. Instead of sharing the benefits of the new age sensibly, the old upper classes, assisted by a bunch of upstarts with criminal tendencies, started grabbing everything that coal produced and keeping it for themselves. They’re still doing it. Good for them! We still have the middle class and the lower classes: folks kept honest by their continuing struggle for survival. This struggle gives us our edge; it keeps the minds of the best of us sharp, and our muscles taut, and our desire to feed and procreate unshakable, and our will to go on invincible.
Now this new stuff, petroleum, is a lot more powerful than coal. Too many benefits: too much to grab; too much to hold onto. They won’t be able to manage it. They’ll fail.
This time, the benefits will spread. The benefits of the Petroleum Age. This time there WILL BE ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE.
The consequences? Oh! It’s going to be awful.
Plenty of machinery running on petroleum: can you imagine? Machines for farming, machines for manufacturing textiles, machines for transporting goods. Building machines, mining machines. Before you know it, everyone on the planet will be a member of the upper class. Petroleum is a lot more efficient than slaves, a lot more versatile than hired laborers, a lot more diligent and productive than the entire German workforce, never mind other countries' workforces. Millions of machines running on petroleum: we’re screwed. It will be as if each person on earth, man, woman, child – each one had a thousand slaves. They'll get out of bed in the morning, and petroleum will light up their flats, run warm water into their tubs, bring milk and flour and eggs and ham from the market and make them breakfast, and so forth. It'll be their tailor and their greengrocer, their laundress and their housemaid. All of us will be ladies and gentlemen.
Horrors.
No one will have to . . . DO anything anymore. Can you imagine . . . everyone just picking their teeth all day long. Disgusting. Yuck.
How long will it take for mankind to become completely degenerate? To turn into a bunch of blithering idiots? Two or three generations? Sheesh.
I’m sorry; this is unacceptable.
Now, being the most intelligent person on earth, it is my duty to do something; do it now. I mean, right now. I must save humanity from degradation: I must act.
But how?
Let’s be rational here. It isn’t the so-called human genius that threatens us. The Age of Invention, they call it: it’s total horseshit. Without coal how much of the stuff they see around themselves every day – how much of it would they have invented? The icebox? The locomotive? The steamboat? The light bulb? Telegraphy? Don't make me laugh; I've already laughed twice today, and that's my daily limit for mindless cackling.
Petroleum: that’s what threatens us.
Petroleum must be dealt with swiftly.
We should stop using it.
But how?
You can’t ban it. You can’t force the powers-that-be to put a moratorium on what they absurdly call “exploration.” The morons will go on digging and drilling no matter what you tell them. They won’t be reasoned with. They’re . . . well . . . they’re not very bright.
The proper way of dealing with the problem is to destroy petroleum.
Destroy it completely, or at least destroy enough of it to make digging up the rest unviable.
Now there’s a thought.
But how?
Let’s see.
People are vain.
Vain, vain, vain. Vanity. Folks are easily flattered, and fond of flattering themselves.
I got it. Yes, I got it!
It’ll take a while, since there’s a whole lot of petroleum in the ground. I may not live long enough to see the results. So what? I’m neither vain nor ambitious. All I want is to keep humanity from losing its edge, it’s mental muscle, its resilience.
I’ll have the morons burn the stuff, all of it, burn it mindlessly, pointlessly, and quickly.
It’ll take a century or so. A century and a half, tops. And then – back to the old hierarchy, and everybody’s safe.
Yes, that’s the only way.
So, how do I have them burn it?
Simple. They’re vain. They want to be ladies and gentlemen, all of them. And what is the one possession that sets ladies and gentlemen apart from the rabble?
The carriage and driver, of course.
Six months later:
My work is done. I’ve just invented the automobile.
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